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cap_ironman2010-12-30 12:06 am
cap_ironman_fe) wrote in cap_ironman2010-12-30 12:06 am
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dollam part one!
Title: age is an irrational number
Author:valtyr
Beta:tsukinofaerii
Universe: Ultimates (1610)
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: Steve and Tony grow old together.
Part One Part Two
"Hello. Hello," Steve crooned at the baby in his arms, and it gave him a fierce look and flailed. "Sh, sh, your mommy is just there, look - " he tried to angle the baby so it could see Valeria Richards at the flower-strewn buffet, stocking up on tiny delicious foodstuffs, but it shoved a fist in its mouth and made a terrible face at him. "She won't be long." That was probably a lie, as she'd been buttonholed by a young Maximoff with a mouth full of quantum mechanics and flattery. Steve would never understand the courtships of the younger generation, although it was fair to say he hadn't been expert in his own.
Of course, in his day Miss Richards would have been a social outcast, and he wouldn't be standing here with an armful of squishy gummy baby.
That would have been a shame, really.
"You still have an arm, Captain?" General Danvers stuffed a toddler into his free arm without waiting for an answer, or even breaking stride, and made a beeline for Fury. Mahr Vehl followed in her wake, and winked at Steve.
"If it's no trouble," he said, and Steve waved him on somewhat awkwardly, trying to get the kid head-end up without resorting to throwing him up in the air and catching him.
The kid seemed to have inherited Grandpa Kree's sunny nature - or maybe the other parent back on the homeworld - he was pretty sure this one was Danvers' daughter's. She'd married a Kree, and her brother had married into mutant royalty, which made the Danvers family was very well-connected. Danvers had timed her pregnancies expertly to coincide with Fury's ascendencies, and reclaimed her job as soon as each kid was walking. Fury maintained it was all blind luck on her part. Steve reckoned sufficient luck was indistinguishable from tactical brilliance, and anyway, she seemed a lot happier than Fury so who was the smart one here?
Fury's voice was rising, and Danvers had her hands on her hips in the attitude that meant she didn't give a hoot if Fury was shouting; Steve decided it was time to take the kids outside, before they decided shrieking was today's game and the wedding reception became a disaster area. The bride was due to make her appearance soon, which would hopefully end the fight for the time being. He suspected he knew what it was about, and and it was going to last for weeks.
He sidled out on to the verandah, and looked down the path towards the fountain, where the Stark brothers sat on a dark stone bench like a mismatched pair of bookends.
Steve squinted at them, tried to see them as strangers for a moment, rather than his husband and his brother-in-law. Gregory looked a bad forty-five, Tony a well-preserved sixty. They were both just over seventy.
Gregory, despite having successfully married off his eldest granddaughter to a man hotly tipped to run for President in 2054, looked sour. Tony looked smug. All normal, then.
The verandah door slammed open, and Fury emerged on a wave of violin music and applause. Steve should really go in and say something nice to the bride; Alicia was a sweet girl. Still, she was also sweet enough to consider baby-sitting a good excuse for absence. He'd take her for a waltz later.
"Danvers claims to be retiring," said Fury in undertones of furious outrage. He'd already disposed of his bow tie somewhere, and his buttonhole was missing most of its leaves. Steve sincerely hoped he hadn't had a fistfight with Danvers. "What's she up to?"
"I think she's retiring," Steve said placidly, disentangling toddler fingers from baby shoelaces. "She said she was done."
"You're never done with this job."
"I hear she's going to live on the Kree homeworld, as a liaison."
"Leaving this job is practically treason."
"She also said if she quit while on top, instead of waiting for you to push her out again, it'd bug you for years."
"Ha!" Fury seethed for a minute. The baby squawked, and he tickled it under the chin; it grinned at him. Babies, inexplicably, tended to like Fury. "Whose kids are these?"
"A Richards and a Danvers."
"Captain Babysitter."
Steve shrugged.
Fury's phone buzzed; he tapped the piece in his ear, and then scowled.
"The fuck, Stark, am I your secretary? He can manage a phone and a baby, or can't you buy your boytoy a handsfree kit?"
Steve ambled down the steps and path, to where Tony was smiling at him. The baby cooed enthusiastically at the glittering concoction of water and obsidian edges that was the fountain, and Tony took the squirming infant from his arms and held it up so it could grasp fruitlessly at the rainbows forming in the bright sunlight. Gregory promptly snagged the toddler, and gave it a suspicious look. It was not entirely impossible he'd push it back at Steve and try and grab the baby from Tony; but he apparently deemed walking and talking made his small child the superior option.
This close, he could see the tiny stiffnesses in Gregory's face, the marks of surgery and chemical treatments that made him look so much younger. He was vaguely aware of all the action beneath the skin, the biochemicals that kept Gregory's body young; some of them had been developed from Steve's own unaging physique.
"Gregory was just telling me I should get Botox, keep myself young, or my trophy husband would stray," Tony batted his eyelashes; Gregory rolled his eyes. "What do you think?"
"I don't recall loving you more when you were younger." Once Steve would have responded with gritted teeth and awkwardness, but they'd knocked the corners off this thing decades ago. Tony liked to play up the billing and cooing in front of Gregory, who had had two marriages and closed both down like defective projects. That competition was a decisive win for Tony, and Steve had no real objection to helping him rub it in.
"I was prettier." Tony grinned, the fans at the corners of his eyes deepening. "Wasn't I?"
Steve put his thumb over the lines, stroked back into the white at his temples; Tony was ageing more gracefully than he'd done anything else in his busy life, which was an example of cosmic injustice, considering all the things he'd put his body through. "I don't think so," he said with perfect sincerity.
"It strikes me as particularly amusing that eternal youth belongs to a man who's largely indifferent to it." Gregory's eyes wandered over him with familiar acquisitiveness; as Tony's perennial favourite, Steve had grown used to the covetous looks, and considered them no more worrisome than the looks he cast at Tony's new cellphone; he was never going to try any of what Steve might describe as funny business.
"Oh, he's only indifferent to it in other people," Tony squeezed his wrist and pressed a kiss to his palm. "We'd soon hear him squalling if his knees started to ache."
"How are the kids?" Steve tried to turn the subject. Gregory scowled. Tony grinned wider.
"Carmine's going to art school," he confided in a hushed tone, and Steve could hear the grind of Gregory's teeth. "Such a shame! A real talent for astrophysics, that one, offered an internship with the Kree, but no, she wants to be a sculptor." Tony gave the baby his cellphone to play with; unsurprisingly, at six months, play with meant eat.
Steve tried to look appropriately surprised and sympathetic, rather than like a man who'd actively abetted his favourite grandniece. Follow your heart, he'd told her, and she'd snorted and turned those sharp blue eyes on him. Her hair was red, like her mother's. I'm too old for cliches, uncle Steve. You can't tell me you never regretted it. He'd showed her Gail's photo a few times, with no sense of guilt; Tony was a gracious victor and had never grudged the part of his heart that would always belong to her.
I regretted it a thousand times, he'd said slowly. But there's a comfort in knowing you chose your own mistakes, and at the end, I won't have anyone to blame but myself. It's my own work, my life. I hope you'll be able to say as much.
Hard to tell if his advice had made a difference. She was a contrary creature, with all Tony's endearing charm and Gregory's ruthlessness.
Tony poked at the baby thoughtfully as it gnashed its gums on his phone. Gregory was staring at the toddler as if monitoring it for art-school tendencies. Steve watched them both, keeping an eye out for sudden sharp objects, poisonous substances, or explosives. You never knew, with Starks.
The baby sneezed, and Tony wrinkled his nose. Gregory gave him a smug look. Steve retrieved the baby, and found a tissue for its nose, and it snuffled and bubbled at him.
"So what are you two plotting now?" A simple enough conversational gambit, but Tony and Gregory exchanged a fleeting glance that rang alarm bells. "This had better not be anything that's going to upset Alicia."
"I'm hurt," Tony gave him limpid eyes, "Wounded that you would think me capable of disrupting that dear child's special day."
"I'm throwing this party, anyway," Gregory glared at them both. "If I want to do something, I will."
Steve looked from one to the other. Guilt, guilt, all over their faces.
"I will be watching you both," he warned, and plucked Danvers Junior from Gregory's hands and turned back to the Mansion.
Gregory stayed at their place, which Steve appreciated. Gregory present at breakfast meant Tony would be in the mood before breakfast, just to demonstrate he was still capable of wrecking Steve. Steve was quite ready to be wrecked; if there was a tiny sneaking regret associated with Tony's age, it was the decrease in his sex drive.
Where Gregory used biology to delay age, Tony used technology to compensate. Steve pressed his face into Tony's shoulder and whimpered shamelessly as the toy inside him pulsed like a heartbeat, and Tony ruffled his hair.
"You like that?" Voice soft and caressing, the sound of it ramping Steve's arousal higher, those coaxing tones that were only Steve's. "Of course you do. Want it bigger?" Steve made a choked noise, unable to form words, and Tony did something to the remote and the reactive gel reshaped inside of him, swelling, and oh God Steve wasn't going to be able to sit at breakfast -
He came again, the fourth time, practically dry, and lifted his head enough to be kissed deep and slow.
"Okay?" Tony stroked his cheek. "Want me to take it out?"
"Not yet." Steve shut his eyes. The deep stretch in his ass still felt good. He let his heartbeat steady, Tony's hand petting idly through his hair. "So what's Extremis?"
He slitted his eyes open to see the slight rigidity that meant Tony was hiding; Steve scowled, and Tony narrowed his eyes. Attack, then.
"Steve, I seem to recall something about trust in our wedding vows." Tony affected hurt, and Steve arched his eyebrows, not fooled at all.
"And?"
"And so hacking into your husband's - " Tony stopped. Then he sighed, and smacked himself in the forehead.
"Hm?" Steve raised his eyebrows, concealing his glee. Just a few seconds delay on Tony's responses after getting laid, but it could be enough.
"You didn't hack my systems, did you?"
"Of course not. I hacked Gregory's last night after you two went to sleep." Gregory should know better than to leave his laptop locked in the safe in his limousine in his brother's high-security garage. "I wasn't sure you were in on it until just now."
"Excuse me, that work could not have been anyone else's." Tony pinched his rear; Steve tried to squirm away, and made a choked noise as the toy shifted inside him.
"That fatality rate looked more like one of Reed's projects," he forced out, and Tony pinched again, and Steve couldn't help rocking his hips against Tony's thigh.
"Excuse me. That project was impossible. I've managed to get that to a point-zero-one chance of success in less than a decade."
"Why?"
"Because science," Tony said testily. "It's very advanced. You couldn't understand." He put his fingers on the tip of the toy where it emerged from Steve's body, and light pressure set sparks behind his eyes. It was a second or two before he could gather words.
"Unless a scientist experienced in both AI and biology explained it to me." Tony's hand froze; his lips tightened.
"You spoke to - "
"We video conferenced. She says hi; all the kids are doing well, and - "
"I'm sure." Tony shook his head. "And did this rate Her Majesty's attention?"
"Wanda wasn't available to talk, but Jan said that she might be willing to enhance the chances of a positive result."
"For a price, of course." He blew a raspberry, which was his way of expressing great respect for the iron hand inside Wanda's still-velvety exterior. Twelve children and twenty-eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild in the royal family of Nation X; Steve was happily anticipating a new crop of little mutant babies to play with very soon. Wanda's policy of outbreeding the flatscans was one she enthusiastically embraced for her own family.
"But why are you doing this? What happened to not wanting to live forever?"
"Living forever's a side-effect, really. All the efforts to find immortality running through your veins, and this turned up in an genetic computer interface. It was Gregory." Tony shut his eyes. "He was halfway there... but there's no elegance in his work, he relies on force and numbers, but he wants this for himself. Which means the success rate has to be in the high nineties before he'll try it. He needed the impossible, in five-star comfort."
"So he came to you, of course, but why did you say yes? Feeling your age at last?" There had been more things, lately, Tony grimacing in the mornings, taking too long to recover from hard missions, but... Steve had been looking forward, vaguely, to Tony retiring, to be safe at home. Not that he wouldn't miss Iron Man at his side, but there would certainly come a time when it was safer for everyone for Tony to stay home.
"I was resigned to death with the tumour, Steve. Every day since then was a gift. And I like to think I've taken them that way. No, it's..." He opened his eyes, and ran his gaze over Steve's body, which looked almost exactly the same as it had done during World War II.
"It's me?" Tony nodded, and Steve blew out an exasperated breath. "You know - "
"I know." He put a finger over Steve's lips. "Don't think I'm not delighted, that you barely even notice I'm wrinkled and grey and my joints click. Because you love me."
"It's normal, Tony. People grow old together all the time."
"But you're not." Tony waved away his protest. "That's not the point, anyway. The point is, you may not notice I'm old, but you're certainly going to notice when I die."
Steve's throat seized, for a second.
"Not for -"
"Practically, the natural human lifespan can be coaxed out to maybe a hundred-thirty."
"Another sixty years," Steve said with some relief. Tony could certainly afford the very best medical care, and even if he somehow bankrupted himself, he was Steve's husband and therefore had SHIELD coverage.
"And I have every confidence you will stay loyally by my side and be genuinely baffled by anyone who suggests you might prefer someone who doesn't need adult diapers."
That went without saying, of course. Tony was Tony, and Steve loved him, and that had all been settled years ago.
"But that just pushes the problem forward, doesn't it? What will you do in sixty years, Steve, when you're young and strong and beautiful and alone, and I'm smoke on the wind?"
"You want to be cremated?" Steve focused on that. He'd assumed there would be a grave to visit when... it happened. He still visited Bucky and Gail at least once a month.
"Flying, yes, and I think I've left sufficient mark on the world a monument would be overkill. Don't change the subject. What will you do?"
Alone, without Tony. Without anyone, by then; Jan and Wanda and Clint might last a little longer, but they would all proceed into their graves, and he would be left all alone -
The children, of course, he'd keep an eye on them, but they'd die in their turns, and they couldn't keep passing him down like some kind of family ghost.
They'd die and disperse and scatter, and Steve would go on unchanging and alone.
Except for Fury, of course.
"I don't want to leave you alone, darling," Tony murmured. "You're so terrible at it. You'll end up collecting stamps and calling in to radio shows to complain about young people."
"I'm not," Steve lied, dry-mouthed. "And even if I were, I don't want you killing yourself with this - "
"I have years and years." Tony squeezed him. "There's no hurry. I'll get that success rate up."
"But Gregory - "
"My brother is convinced we can get it all done in a year. And he said that five years ago. Steve. It's all right. I have no motivation to take terrible stupid risks, all right? I want to stay right here with you."
"I worry, Tony, I - ahhh," Steve bucked his hips involuntarily as Tony's hand moved back to the remote. "No, that's cheating - "
"I have to take the advantages I can," Tony said, and slapped Steve's ass. "Up on your hands and knees; I have some functionality I want to test - "
Worry receded under the warm tide of lust slipping over his body. He put his head down and panted, and decided to forget he'd ever heard the word Extremis.
Tony caught the baby's cold, of course, and spent three days confined to bed, sneezing disconsolately while Steve brought him soup and orange juice and ignored his pathetic requests for hot toddies and coffee and laptop. It was only a cold, but Tony was not exactly known for taking good care of himself, and turning a cold into pneumonia would be just like him.
On the fourth day, Steve granted him couch and laptop access, and snuggled up beside him with a book. Reading with Tony's hand carding absently through his hair was always a pleasure, and it meant he could listen to Tony's breathing for telltale rattles. You really couldn't be too careful.
Sixty years, Steve thought, and resolutely turned his eyes to his book.
Twenty minutes in, Steve's phone went off. Any vague hopes of a friendly chat or a request to babysit died when Fury's name appeared on the screen.
"Tell the old boy you've caught my cold," Tony suggested loudly enough for the microphone to catch, and Steve held the phone to Tony's ear until Fury had done cursing at him.
Fury had a foreign mission for them, and that made Steve uncomfortable. The Ultimates, as a team, rarely left the US. The last time had been chasing down a rogue Nation X mutant, and Wanda had pulled the strings for that. Whether the strings were attached to people, or the fabric of reality, he wasn't sure.
"It's not interfering," Fury said, voice too loud for the phone. "They've requested help. And because they requested help, we are going to send our best out and be extremely helpful and not invade anywhere, because the United States is a helpful neighbour who just want to do good in the world."
"He's got that written on his palm in marker, I've seen it," Tony contributed, and Steve gave him a stern look that didn't faze him at all. The more they interacted with alien nations, the more Fury seemed to shift his allegiance to humanity as a whole, rather than America, and Steve was inclined to encourage this development.
"We go there, punch some sharks, accept their thanks and come home clutching straw donkeys and postcards."
"My kind of plan." Steve rolled onto his back and looked up at Tony, who raised his brows expectantly. "Tony's still benched, though." Tony stuck his tongue out, and Fury growled.
"He does this on purpose. Take War Machine." Tony huffed, and tapped pointedly at his keyboard, the usual signal for I am doing very important work nyah.
Steve sat patiently through a conspiracy theory about how Danvers had retired to foment rebellion among the mermaids, and then hung up and cuddled up to Tony.
"The War Machine is terrible at underwater work." Tony scowled at him. "You'll miss me when - "
"I'll miss you all the time." Steve kissed his temple, not-so-subtly checking pulse and temperature, and Tony's mouth twisted in the way that meant he was trying to stay annoyed. "And War Machine's not terrible. There's a big gap between terrible and not as good as Iron Man, you know."
"And don't you forget it. I'm not giving up my place on the Ultimates to Gregory's off-brand knockoffs. Call me if you need support." Steve made a face. Of course I will sounded like an easy lie, but he knew in the moment where he crunched the numbers and made the calls, he'd drag Tony from his death-bed if he judged it necessary.
He was also smart enough to know letting Tony risk his life was much better for his overall well-being than Steve's preventable death would be. War Machine wasn't too bad, though. This one had only been in the suit four years, but he was doing well enough. There would be no call for Iron Man.
"It sounds like a simple job," he said instead. "You'd just get bored and start showboating."
"You're jinxing it now." Tony gave him a kiss, and turned back to the screen. "Hurry back."
Next
Author:
valtyrBeta:
tsukinofaeriiUniverse: Ultimates (1610)
Rating: NC-17
Prompt: Steve and Tony grow old together.
Part One Part Two
"Hello. Hello," Steve crooned at the baby in his arms, and it gave him a fierce look and flailed. "Sh, sh, your mommy is just there, look - " he tried to angle the baby so it could see Valeria Richards at the flower-strewn buffet, stocking up on tiny delicious foodstuffs, but it shoved a fist in its mouth and made a terrible face at him. "She won't be long." That was probably a lie, as she'd been buttonholed by a young Maximoff with a mouth full of quantum mechanics and flattery. Steve would never understand the courtships of the younger generation, although it was fair to say he hadn't been expert in his own.
Of course, in his day Miss Richards would have been a social outcast, and he wouldn't be standing here with an armful of squishy gummy baby.
That would have been a shame, really.
"You still have an arm, Captain?" General Danvers stuffed a toddler into his free arm without waiting for an answer, or even breaking stride, and made a beeline for Fury. Mahr Vehl followed in her wake, and winked at Steve.
"If it's no trouble," he said, and Steve waved him on somewhat awkwardly, trying to get the kid head-end up without resorting to throwing him up in the air and catching him.
The kid seemed to have inherited Grandpa Kree's sunny nature - or maybe the other parent back on the homeworld - he was pretty sure this one was Danvers' daughter's. She'd married a Kree, and her brother had married into mutant royalty, which made the Danvers family was very well-connected. Danvers had timed her pregnancies expertly to coincide with Fury's ascendencies, and reclaimed her job as soon as each kid was walking. Fury maintained it was all blind luck on her part. Steve reckoned sufficient luck was indistinguishable from tactical brilliance, and anyway, she seemed a lot happier than Fury so who was the smart one here?
Fury's voice was rising, and Danvers had her hands on her hips in the attitude that meant she didn't give a hoot if Fury was shouting; Steve decided it was time to take the kids outside, before they decided shrieking was today's game and the wedding reception became a disaster area. The bride was due to make her appearance soon, which would hopefully end the fight for the time being. He suspected he knew what it was about, and and it was going to last for weeks.
He sidled out on to the verandah, and looked down the path towards the fountain, where the Stark brothers sat on a dark stone bench like a mismatched pair of bookends.
Steve squinted at them, tried to see them as strangers for a moment, rather than his husband and his brother-in-law. Gregory looked a bad forty-five, Tony a well-preserved sixty. They were both just over seventy.
Gregory, despite having successfully married off his eldest granddaughter to a man hotly tipped to run for President in 2054, looked sour. Tony looked smug. All normal, then.
The verandah door slammed open, and Fury emerged on a wave of violin music and applause. Steve should really go in and say something nice to the bride; Alicia was a sweet girl. Still, she was also sweet enough to consider baby-sitting a good excuse for absence. He'd take her for a waltz later.
"Danvers claims to be retiring," said Fury in undertones of furious outrage. He'd already disposed of his bow tie somewhere, and his buttonhole was missing most of its leaves. Steve sincerely hoped he hadn't had a fistfight with Danvers. "What's she up to?"
"I think she's retiring," Steve said placidly, disentangling toddler fingers from baby shoelaces. "She said she was done."
"You're never done with this job."
"I hear she's going to live on the Kree homeworld, as a liaison."
"Leaving this job is practically treason."
"She also said if she quit while on top, instead of waiting for you to push her out again, it'd bug you for years."
"Ha!" Fury seethed for a minute. The baby squawked, and he tickled it under the chin; it grinned at him. Babies, inexplicably, tended to like Fury. "Whose kids are these?"
"A Richards and a Danvers."
"Captain Babysitter."
Steve shrugged.
Fury's phone buzzed; he tapped the piece in his ear, and then scowled.
"The fuck, Stark, am I your secretary? He can manage a phone and a baby, or can't you buy your boytoy a handsfree kit?"
Steve ambled down the steps and path, to where Tony was smiling at him. The baby cooed enthusiastically at the glittering concoction of water and obsidian edges that was the fountain, and Tony took the squirming infant from his arms and held it up so it could grasp fruitlessly at the rainbows forming in the bright sunlight. Gregory promptly snagged the toddler, and gave it a suspicious look. It was not entirely impossible he'd push it back at Steve and try and grab the baby from Tony; but he apparently deemed walking and talking made his small child the superior option.
This close, he could see the tiny stiffnesses in Gregory's face, the marks of surgery and chemical treatments that made him look so much younger. He was vaguely aware of all the action beneath the skin, the biochemicals that kept Gregory's body young; some of them had been developed from Steve's own unaging physique.
"Gregory was just telling me I should get Botox, keep myself young, or my trophy husband would stray," Tony batted his eyelashes; Gregory rolled his eyes. "What do you think?"
"I don't recall loving you more when you were younger." Once Steve would have responded with gritted teeth and awkwardness, but they'd knocked the corners off this thing decades ago. Tony liked to play up the billing and cooing in front of Gregory, who had had two marriages and closed both down like defective projects. That competition was a decisive win for Tony, and Steve had no real objection to helping him rub it in.
"I was prettier." Tony grinned, the fans at the corners of his eyes deepening. "Wasn't I?"
Steve put his thumb over the lines, stroked back into the white at his temples; Tony was ageing more gracefully than he'd done anything else in his busy life, which was an example of cosmic injustice, considering all the things he'd put his body through. "I don't think so," he said with perfect sincerity.
"It strikes me as particularly amusing that eternal youth belongs to a man who's largely indifferent to it." Gregory's eyes wandered over him with familiar acquisitiveness; as Tony's perennial favourite, Steve had grown used to the covetous looks, and considered them no more worrisome than the looks he cast at Tony's new cellphone; he was never going to try any of what Steve might describe as funny business.
"Oh, he's only indifferent to it in other people," Tony squeezed his wrist and pressed a kiss to his palm. "We'd soon hear him squalling if his knees started to ache."
"How are the kids?" Steve tried to turn the subject. Gregory scowled. Tony grinned wider.
"Carmine's going to art school," he confided in a hushed tone, and Steve could hear the grind of Gregory's teeth. "Such a shame! A real talent for astrophysics, that one, offered an internship with the Kree, but no, she wants to be a sculptor." Tony gave the baby his cellphone to play with; unsurprisingly, at six months, play with meant eat.
Steve tried to look appropriately surprised and sympathetic, rather than like a man who'd actively abetted his favourite grandniece. Follow your heart, he'd told her, and she'd snorted and turned those sharp blue eyes on him. Her hair was red, like her mother's. I'm too old for cliches, uncle Steve. You can't tell me you never regretted it. He'd showed her Gail's photo a few times, with no sense of guilt; Tony was a gracious victor and had never grudged the part of his heart that would always belong to her.
I regretted it a thousand times, he'd said slowly. But there's a comfort in knowing you chose your own mistakes, and at the end, I won't have anyone to blame but myself. It's my own work, my life. I hope you'll be able to say as much.
Hard to tell if his advice had made a difference. She was a contrary creature, with all Tony's endearing charm and Gregory's ruthlessness.
Tony poked at the baby thoughtfully as it gnashed its gums on his phone. Gregory was staring at the toddler as if monitoring it for art-school tendencies. Steve watched them both, keeping an eye out for sudden sharp objects, poisonous substances, or explosives. You never knew, with Starks.
The baby sneezed, and Tony wrinkled his nose. Gregory gave him a smug look. Steve retrieved the baby, and found a tissue for its nose, and it snuffled and bubbled at him.
"So what are you two plotting now?" A simple enough conversational gambit, but Tony and Gregory exchanged a fleeting glance that rang alarm bells. "This had better not be anything that's going to upset Alicia."
"I'm hurt," Tony gave him limpid eyes, "Wounded that you would think me capable of disrupting that dear child's special day."
"I'm throwing this party, anyway," Gregory glared at them both. "If I want to do something, I will."
Steve looked from one to the other. Guilt, guilt, all over their faces.
"I will be watching you both," he warned, and plucked Danvers Junior from Gregory's hands and turned back to the Mansion.
Gregory stayed at their place, which Steve appreciated. Gregory present at breakfast meant Tony would be in the mood before breakfast, just to demonstrate he was still capable of wrecking Steve. Steve was quite ready to be wrecked; if there was a tiny sneaking regret associated with Tony's age, it was the decrease in his sex drive.
Where Gregory used biology to delay age, Tony used technology to compensate. Steve pressed his face into Tony's shoulder and whimpered shamelessly as the toy inside him pulsed like a heartbeat, and Tony ruffled his hair.
"You like that?" Voice soft and caressing, the sound of it ramping Steve's arousal higher, those coaxing tones that were only Steve's. "Of course you do. Want it bigger?" Steve made a choked noise, unable to form words, and Tony did something to the remote and the reactive gel reshaped inside of him, swelling, and oh God Steve wasn't going to be able to sit at breakfast -
He came again, the fourth time, practically dry, and lifted his head enough to be kissed deep and slow.
"Okay?" Tony stroked his cheek. "Want me to take it out?"
"Not yet." Steve shut his eyes. The deep stretch in his ass still felt good. He let his heartbeat steady, Tony's hand petting idly through his hair. "So what's Extremis?"
He slitted his eyes open to see the slight rigidity that meant Tony was hiding; Steve scowled, and Tony narrowed his eyes. Attack, then.
"Steve, I seem to recall something about trust in our wedding vows." Tony affected hurt, and Steve arched his eyebrows, not fooled at all.
"And?"
"And so hacking into your husband's - " Tony stopped. Then he sighed, and smacked himself in the forehead.
"Hm?" Steve raised his eyebrows, concealing his glee. Just a few seconds delay on Tony's responses after getting laid, but it could be enough.
"You didn't hack my systems, did you?"
"Of course not. I hacked Gregory's last night after you two went to sleep." Gregory should know better than to leave his laptop locked in the safe in his limousine in his brother's high-security garage. "I wasn't sure you were in on it until just now."
"Excuse me, that work could not have been anyone else's." Tony pinched his rear; Steve tried to squirm away, and made a choked noise as the toy shifted inside him.
"That fatality rate looked more like one of Reed's projects," he forced out, and Tony pinched again, and Steve couldn't help rocking his hips against Tony's thigh.
"Excuse me. That project was impossible. I've managed to get that to a point-zero-one chance of success in less than a decade."
"Why?"
"Because science," Tony said testily. "It's very advanced. You couldn't understand." He put his fingers on the tip of the toy where it emerged from Steve's body, and light pressure set sparks behind his eyes. It was a second or two before he could gather words.
"Unless a scientist experienced in both AI and biology explained it to me." Tony's hand froze; his lips tightened.
"You spoke to - "
"We video conferenced. She says hi; all the kids are doing well, and - "
"I'm sure." Tony shook his head. "And did this rate Her Majesty's attention?"
"Wanda wasn't available to talk, but Jan said that she might be willing to enhance the chances of a positive result."
"For a price, of course." He blew a raspberry, which was his way of expressing great respect for the iron hand inside Wanda's still-velvety exterior. Twelve children and twenty-eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild in the royal family of Nation X; Steve was happily anticipating a new crop of little mutant babies to play with very soon. Wanda's policy of outbreeding the flatscans was one she enthusiastically embraced for her own family.
"But why are you doing this? What happened to not wanting to live forever?"
"Living forever's a side-effect, really. All the efforts to find immortality running through your veins, and this turned up in an genetic computer interface. It was Gregory." Tony shut his eyes. "He was halfway there... but there's no elegance in his work, he relies on force and numbers, but he wants this for himself. Which means the success rate has to be in the high nineties before he'll try it. He needed the impossible, in five-star comfort."
"So he came to you, of course, but why did you say yes? Feeling your age at last?" There had been more things, lately, Tony grimacing in the mornings, taking too long to recover from hard missions, but... Steve had been looking forward, vaguely, to Tony retiring, to be safe at home. Not that he wouldn't miss Iron Man at his side, but there would certainly come a time when it was safer for everyone for Tony to stay home.
"I was resigned to death with the tumour, Steve. Every day since then was a gift. And I like to think I've taken them that way. No, it's..." He opened his eyes, and ran his gaze over Steve's body, which looked almost exactly the same as it had done during World War II.
"It's me?" Tony nodded, and Steve blew out an exasperated breath. "You know - "
"I know." He put a finger over Steve's lips. "Don't think I'm not delighted, that you barely even notice I'm wrinkled and grey and my joints click. Because you love me."
"It's normal, Tony. People grow old together all the time."
"But you're not." Tony waved away his protest. "That's not the point, anyway. The point is, you may not notice I'm old, but you're certainly going to notice when I die."
Steve's throat seized, for a second.
"Not for -"
"Practically, the natural human lifespan can be coaxed out to maybe a hundred-thirty."
"Another sixty years," Steve said with some relief. Tony could certainly afford the very best medical care, and even if he somehow bankrupted himself, he was Steve's husband and therefore had SHIELD coverage.
"And I have every confidence you will stay loyally by my side and be genuinely baffled by anyone who suggests you might prefer someone who doesn't need adult diapers."
That went without saying, of course. Tony was Tony, and Steve loved him, and that had all been settled years ago.
"But that just pushes the problem forward, doesn't it? What will you do in sixty years, Steve, when you're young and strong and beautiful and alone, and I'm smoke on the wind?"
"You want to be cremated?" Steve focused on that. He'd assumed there would be a grave to visit when... it happened. He still visited Bucky and Gail at least once a month.
"Flying, yes, and I think I've left sufficient mark on the world a monument would be overkill. Don't change the subject. What will you do?"
Alone, without Tony. Without anyone, by then; Jan and Wanda and Clint might last a little longer, but they would all proceed into their graves, and he would be left all alone -
The children, of course, he'd keep an eye on them, but they'd die in their turns, and they couldn't keep passing him down like some kind of family ghost.
They'd die and disperse and scatter, and Steve would go on unchanging and alone.
Except for Fury, of course.
"I don't want to leave you alone, darling," Tony murmured. "You're so terrible at it. You'll end up collecting stamps and calling in to radio shows to complain about young people."
"I'm not," Steve lied, dry-mouthed. "And even if I were, I don't want you killing yourself with this - "
"I have years and years." Tony squeezed him. "There's no hurry. I'll get that success rate up."
"But Gregory - "
"My brother is convinced we can get it all done in a year. And he said that five years ago. Steve. It's all right. I have no motivation to take terrible stupid risks, all right? I want to stay right here with you."
"I worry, Tony, I - ahhh," Steve bucked his hips involuntarily as Tony's hand moved back to the remote. "No, that's cheating - "
"I have to take the advantages I can," Tony said, and slapped Steve's ass. "Up on your hands and knees; I have some functionality I want to test - "
Worry receded under the warm tide of lust slipping over his body. He put his head down and panted, and decided to forget he'd ever heard the word Extremis.
Tony caught the baby's cold, of course, and spent three days confined to bed, sneezing disconsolately while Steve brought him soup and orange juice and ignored his pathetic requests for hot toddies and coffee and laptop. It was only a cold, but Tony was not exactly known for taking good care of himself, and turning a cold into pneumonia would be just like him.
On the fourth day, Steve granted him couch and laptop access, and snuggled up beside him with a book. Reading with Tony's hand carding absently through his hair was always a pleasure, and it meant he could listen to Tony's breathing for telltale rattles. You really couldn't be too careful.
Sixty years, Steve thought, and resolutely turned his eyes to his book.
Twenty minutes in, Steve's phone went off. Any vague hopes of a friendly chat or a request to babysit died when Fury's name appeared on the screen.
"Tell the old boy you've caught my cold," Tony suggested loudly enough for the microphone to catch, and Steve held the phone to Tony's ear until Fury had done cursing at him.
Fury had a foreign mission for them, and that made Steve uncomfortable. The Ultimates, as a team, rarely left the US. The last time had been chasing down a rogue Nation X mutant, and Wanda had pulled the strings for that. Whether the strings were attached to people, or the fabric of reality, he wasn't sure.
"It's not interfering," Fury said, voice too loud for the phone. "They've requested help. And because they requested help, we are going to send our best out and be extremely helpful and not invade anywhere, because the United States is a helpful neighbour who just want to do good in the world."
"He's got that written on his palm in marker, I've seen it," Tony contributed, and Steve gave him a stern look that didn't faze him at all. The more they interacted with alien nations, the more Fury seemed to shift his allegiance to humanity as a whole, rather than America, and Steve was inclined to encourage this development.
"We go there, punch some sharks, accept their thanks and come home clutching straw donkeys and postcards."
"My kind of plan." Steve rolled onto his back and looked up at Tony, who raised his brows expectantly. "Tony's still benched, though." Tony stuck his tongue out, and Fury growled.
"He does this on purpose. Take War Machine." Tony huffed, and tapped pointedly at his keyboard, the usual signal for I am doing very important work nyah.
Steve sat patiently through a conspiracy theory about how Danvers had retired to foment rebellion among the mermaids, and then hung up and cuddled up to Tony.
"The War Machine is terrible at underwater work." Tony scowled at him. "You'll miss me when - "
"I'll miss you all the time." Steve kissed his temple, not-so-subtly checking pulse and temperature, and Tony's mouth twisted in the way that meant he was trying to stay annoyed. "And War Machine's not terrible. There's a big gap between terrible and not as good as Iron Man, you know."
"And don't you forget it. I'm not giving up my place on the Ultimates to Gregory's off-brand knockoffs. Call me if you need support." Steve made a face. Of course I will sounded like an easy lie, but he knew in the moment where he crunched the numbers and made the calls, he'd drag Tony from his death-bed if he judged it necessary.
He was also smart enough to know letting Tony risk his life was much better for his overall well-being than Steve's preventable death would be. War Machine wasn't too bad, though. This one had only been in the suit four years, but he was doing well enough. There would be no call for Iron Man.
"It sounds like a simple job," he said instead. "You'd just get bored and start showboating."
"You're jinxing it now." Tony gave him a kiss, and turned back to the screen. "Hurry back."
Next
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I was gonna call in sick. Read part one and practically went flying through the door. This is so so great.
*swoons and cuddles fic*
O,o Lots and lots of babies there! Loved all the fluffy marrying between friends and kids. And Ultimate Cap and Gregory babysitting! hahahaha. O, Wanda. lol twelve kids? Winning the battle through babies. haha. Babies must be the solution to Ultimate verse. hmm.
It takes only half a century to make Ultimate Steve into a 616?! LOL! And there were marriage vows? Cap did the marriage vows?
Except for Fury, of course.
Hahahahahaha! I nearly knocked out the laptop from my desk doubling over! Poor Steve. Love all the family bondages.
Tony using Steve as leverage against his brother. Super cute! lol
And of course, massive hotness. I'm sure I have done nothing to deserve this.
I'm saving part two for the end of the day, can't wait to see what happens! Dear anon, massive thanks for the gift.
Blew all the miseries I've been into, Thank you!
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Well, Cap wasn't going to let Tony do the marriage vows. Who knows what would have ended up in there?